tarmacking is a horrible job especially at night, personally I’d rather reduce the cost of infrastructure maintenance using automation and then pay people a living wage to do nicer jobs.
This is really positive news especially as most the efficiency savings come from things that are only at the start of their roll-out, a lot of the infrastructure development for solar and wind is already in place with construction already in progress for huge amounts of generation. It likely also that the lower demand for electricity comes in part due to more efficient devices gaining market share; better water heaters, heat-pumps, LED lighting, etc combined with better insulation and more focus on efficiency - plus of course home solar or similar, an increasing amount of people are at least partly off-grid and use home generated power which reduces demand on the power grid.
We also have some really useful new tech starting to reach market like tidal generation, tandem solar cells, Perovskite (which we’ve been hearing about for ages but they’re actually starting to build factories), e-fuels (again long heralded but actually starting to move into commercial production), and various new electric planes, boats, charging technologies, energy storage mediums, and etc all of which will help increase the rate of adoption and help decrease carbon emissions.
that’s a great graph, really looking forward to seeing those times where renewables exceed demand get more common then all flatten out as systems designed to use excess power are added - pumped storage for example and desalination can be scaled to match the excess.
Basically you have a desalination plant near your solar or wind and any excess power gets diverted there, fresh water is then pumped into lakes and reservoirs which can either be converted back into power via hydro or used in agriculture, industry and homes as needed.